New York Doctor Going To Prison For Fatal Abortion

OTHER NEWS TO NOTE - NORTHEAST

September 13, 1995

NEW YORK — A doctor who botched an abortion, causing a woman to bleed to death, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison for murder. Dr. David Benjamin, 58, was found guilty Aug. 8 in an extraordinary rare instance of criminal charges filed over a medical mistake. ''This was not a political case or malpractice,'' Judge Robert J. Hanophy said in imposing the maximum. ''It was depraved, indifferent murder.'' The conviction was the first of its kind in New York state, and authorities could cite only one other U.S. case in which a doctor was convicted of murder for botched work.